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Re: Has/Have any of you been to England?

Originally Posted by allenman

I have *never* heard "has any of you..." ever in my life -- it's "have any of you.."

AmE native -- not a teacher

Try to be sure of your facts before posting such an absolute statement. The fact that you have never heard something is not an indicator of whether it's correct or not. As "any of you" or "any one of you" refers to a specific component of a group, "has" is certainly correct. As others have pointed out, "have" is also correct.

Re: Has/Have any of you been to England?

Originally Posted by riquecohen

Try to be sure of your facts before posting such an absolute statement. The fact that you have never heard something is not an indicator of whether it's correct or not. As "any of you" or "any one of you" refers to a specific component of a group, "has" is certainly correct. As others have pointed out, "have" is also correct.

As always, English is highly sensitive to what we might call "empathy toward others' expectations and hopes."

If we expect an individual to answer we would be more likely to ask, "Has any of you ever...." but if we expect groups or pairs to answer, we'd be more likely to ask the other, "Have any of you..."

The source of possible disagreement is likely that AmE is getting sloppy with singular/plural questions lately. I've heard teachers ask children "Where's your eyes? And where's your ears?".. as an example.

Re: Has/Have any of you been to England?

Originally Posted by konungursvia

The source of possible disagreement is likely that AmE is getting sloppy with singular/plural questions lately. I've heard teachers ask children "Where's your eyes? And where's your ears?".. as an example.

Slightly off-topic, but that quote contains something (underlined) that I, a moderately conservative speaker of BrE would never say or write, though it seems to be perfectly acceptable in North American varieties of English.

I can say only:

The source of possible disagreement is probably that AmE is getting sloppy ...
orThe source of possible disagreement is likely to be that AmE is getting sloppy...

In BrE, we do not normally use 'likely' in the way that konungursvia used it, though, strangely enough, we can use ''most/very likely' here.

Re: Has/Have any of you been to England?

Originally Posted by riquecohen

Try to be sure of your facts before posting such an absolute statement. The fact that you have never heard something is not an indicator of whether it's correct or not. As "any of you" or "any one of you" refers to a specific component of a group, "has" is certainly correct. As others have pointed out, "have" is also correct.

Not a teacher

Quoted from New Oxford American dictionary:
When used as a pronoun, any can be used with either a singular or a plural verb, depending on the context: we needed more sugar but there wasn't any left (singular verb) or are any of the new videos available? (plural verb).

So, in the case of 'any of you' it should be the same as the latter example. The correct form should be 'have any of you' as you is in plural form.

'Any one of you' is different. Any one, meaning ‘any single (person or thing),’ is written as two words to emphasize singularity: any one of us could do the job; not more than ten new members are chosen in any one year.
If you're using 'any one', then you should say 'has any one of you ...'.

Re: Has/Have any of you been to England?

Originally Posted by language_fanatic

The correct form should be 'have any of you' as you is in plural form.

Well no, and (almost tongue-in-cheek) I declare we should hope for a better contribution from a Swedish resident, as you should now know that "any" is a cognate of the Old Norse word ekki and modern Swedish ej, and as such, it used to be a negation. Its original meaning in such questions would be something like "None of you have...... ?" and as such, neither singular nor plural is necessarily dictated by the null set or zero.

Both singular and plural are in use, as many native speakers who are also teachers have stated. Trust us.